The commission was chaired by a barrister, Craig Moore. The other two members were Stuart Ripley, the former Blackburn Rovers winger, who is now a solicitor, and the head of the Huntingdonshire FA, Maurice Armstrong.

John Terry did say the words "fucking black cunt" to Anton Ferdinand as an insult The commission rejected the defence Terry had advanced all the way through his criminal trial and FA proceedings. Terry had claimed he used those words only because he was repeating them back to Ferdinand, to deny Ferdinand's accusation that Terry had just called him a "fucking black cunt".

"We are quite satisfied that the offending words were said by way of insult," the commission concluded.

Terry's defence, which he advanced in court, was untrue In Terry's criminal trial at Westminster magistrates court, the chief magistrate, Howard Riddle, had said Terry's defence was "unlikely" but raised enough doubt for an acquittal.

The commission, applying a different standard of proof, the balance of probabilities, said it did not believe Terry. The judgment describes aspects of the defence as "improbable, implausible and contrived". They concluded: "There is no credible basis for Mr Terry's defence."

Ashley Cole changed his evidence to support Terry's defence, and was unreliable The commission found that Cole changed his evidence "retrospectively" about the altercation between Terry and Ferdinand, "with a view to bolstering" Terry's defence.

In his interview with the FA, the commission found, Cole did not say Anton Ferdinand had used the word "black" in his confrontation with Terry. Cole then asked the FA, after the interview, to insert the word "black" into his witness statement.

The commission suggested he did this to strengthen Terry's defence. If the chief magistrate had had the FA's notes of its interview with Cole, in which the FA did not record Cole mentioning the word "black", the commission argues "considerable doubts" would have been cast on whether Cole's evidence was "reliable".

There were "very real concerns" over the evidence given by Chelsea's secretary, David Barnard Barnard had asked the FA, on Cole's behalf, to include the word "black" in Cole's witness statement. Barnard told the commission 10 months later, on September 13 this year, that "I clearly remember" Cole had mentioned the word "black" when interviewed by the FA in November 2011.

The commission did not believe that. They concluded that Barnard had asked for the word to be inserted because it would help Terry's case.

The commission accepted mitigating factors to decide a four-match ban was appropriate These included that Ferdinand provoked Terry, although that was no "excuse"; Terry's good disciplinary record; an acceptance that Terry "is not a racist"; and the Premier League chairman, Sir Dave Richards, testifying as to Terry's charity work.

The level of offence was lower than that of Luis Suárez because Terry had used the racist word only once Terry was given a four-match ban, whereas Liverpool's Suárez was suspended for eight matches after racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra, because Terry had used the racist insult only once, while Suárez was found to have repeated the offending words.

The FA's barrister argued Terry may have said "fucking black cunt" as an "almost unconscious" insult The commission noted that strange argument by Jonathan Laidlaw QC, who prosecuted the case against Terry on behalf of the FA. It quotes Laidlaw saying Terry's words were: "'Perhaps an almost unconscious stream of invective,' delivered in anger, and 'without thinking through the consequences of what he was about to say'."